


Though The Stars Walk Backward

by unscriptedemily



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Existentialism, Fluff, Guns, Kinda, M/M, Mutual Pining, Roadtrips, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, and i dont just mean the bicep kind either ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), as per usual lmao, gratuitous use of the word 'golden' in reference to ed's hair, sidenote the ocs are only background characters no worries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unscriptedemily/pseuds/unscriptedemily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times has it been, now? Roy doesn’t know; eventually the lifetimes blur into one long streak of dark and light. Thousands of lives—thousands of times, dates, years. He’s seen empires rise and fall; he’s been hated and loved and feared and betrayed.<br/>One thing he does remember, clear and clean as fresh snow, is Edward Elric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WOW  
> so this is part one of a new REINCARNATION AU how great does that sound. very. yes.  
> this was beta'd by the wonderful incredible too-good-for-this-world [kat](http://www.edwarcl.tumblr.com)!!!!  
> part 2 will be on it's way....at some point!
> 
> the title is from [Dive For Dreams](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/80/3#!/20591780) by e.e. cummings. it's that one quote you know 'trust your heart/if the seas catch fire/(and live by love/though the stars walk backward)'
> 
> enjoy <3

It’s getting warm again, slowly but surely. The frozen lakes and wind give way to a light breeze, to green riverbanks and ducklings. Roy blows a curl of steam from his coffee and watches the people milling in the street through the window. It rained last night, and there is the faintest smell of it still lingering in the air. Roy tastes it on his tongue every time the door swings open to admit another customer.

The last time he came here, it was 1923, and they were preparing for war. The last time he sat in this chair, the window beside him was smashed, half-covered with a hasty board. Roy looks over to the counter where the barista is cheerfully explaining the difference between a soy-milk latte and a skimmed-milk latte; and for a moment he sees the overflowing ashtrays again, the propaganda posters, the torn ration cards and the grim faces of the workers.

 It’s 2016 now, and he’s walked these same streets in so many different eras that they all seem to meld together.

Every lifetime is different. They start as lifetimes usually do: a simple childhood and a strange feeling that something is missing—but then he grows up, and his memories return. He sees, briefly, an empty white void, eternal, and before him a towering dark gate. He glimpses the wide, toothy smile and hears the “ _Are you ready?”_ And after that, it’s just a case of putting his memories in order and trying not to accidentally tell someone.

He’s been an artist, a knight, a politician, and a scientist. On one memorable occasion, he even led a coup against a corrupt government.

How many times has it been, now? Roy doesn’t know, can’t remember; the lifetimes blur into one another eventually, one long streak of dark and light. Thousands of lives—thousands of times, dates, years. He’s seen empires rise and fall; he’s been hated and loved and feared and betrayed.

One thing he does remember, clear and clean as fresh snow, is Edward Elric.

He can’t recall the time period, doesn’t know the dates, and can only remember the slightest _hints_ at certain events. But he sees, in sharp relief, the face of the only other reincarnate he’s ever met before.

Edward Elric. Golden eyes like honey, like flame; Roy’s had thousands of lifetimes in which to wax lyrical about them—once, when he was an artist in France, he made millions from painting them.  
They had spent just a single lifetime together.

Roy remembers Ed even as he forgets the myriads of others. What he shared with them will _always_ be so much less important than this- despite the fact that he only half-remembers what _this_ is.

The slow, harsh burn of affection. It had started as a mutual hatred and had fallen into something deeper, more tangled and twisted and unknowable; they’d circled around it for years and years until one or both of them had given in under it all.

Roy remembers, with a certain sad fondness, Ed’s face above him creased with angry tears, a grip on his hand so hard it almost hurt, _“Wait for me, you bastard. I love you.”_ And then another one of those uncountable deaths: sinking, dark, nothingness.

And when he realised, in the next life, a late teenager dropping his chemistry textbooks in the hallway, frozen stock still as the sudden rush of comprehension fell about him like rainfall.  
He’d spent years searching for him: Edward Elric.

They’d never seen each other again. Typical, Roy thinks wryly, that the only other reincarnate he’d ever met before would be the same one he’d fall in love with. And then lose, apparently.

Someone comes over to collect his empty coffee cup and he smiles and orders another. They blush, nodding, “ _Just a minute, then!”_ Roy turns back to the window when they leave, smile falling away. He wishes—god, he doesn’t know what he wishes. That Ed would find him? That he would learn to _leave it be_ and stop wasting his time searching for someone who he’s almost certain doesn’t want to be found? He doesn’t even know if the reincarnate thing works for Ed the same way it does for him. Maybe you only get a finite amount of lifetimes. Maybe not everyone gets part of their memories back.

Maybe he should have asked more questions when he had the chance. Maybe he should have _treasured their time together more_ when he had the chance.

Maybe he should have done a lot of things differently, however many lifetimes ago it was.

The person is back again, setting his second cup of coffee in front of him. Roy smiles again, thanks them again, and raises the cool porcelain to his mouth. Risks a cursory glance around the café. Asks himself what he’s looking for. Does he think Ed’s going to walk in at any moment, swing himself into the seat opposite and flash the wicked grin that haunts Roy’s dreams?

“I need to get out more,” he tells his reflection in the window. A passing barista gives him a strange look.

You’d think he’d have gotten used to it by now. It was a long time ago. But—the _dreams_ ; and the headaches that accompany a new memory, slotting into place amongst the others than he calls the Ed-era. They were in love. Roy knows that. He can’t _forget_ it; it hasn’t happened since and he’s willing to bet it hadn’t happened before—maybe that’s why he can’t fucking move on. Because he might not remember the year he met Edward Elric, but he _certainly_ remembers what it was like to be in love with him. It is the single most exquisite torture of his many, many lifetimes to know that likely he will never look into his aureate eyes again; will never kiss him again, soft and gentle or deep and sharp and rough.

Roy rubs a hand over his eyes. This is ridiculous.

The door swings open, cold air rushes in. Roy looks up and for a second—a flash of golden hair, sharp cheekbones, dark eyelashes—

Dark eyelashes framing brown eyes. Hair just the slightest shade too dark. Posture too straight, shoes too sensible, fashion sense not _nearly_ outrageous enough.

It’s not him.

These days, it’s never him.

Roy finishes his second cup of coffee.

 

***

 

He’s paid for his overpriced, poorly roasted coffee and is shrugging on his coat when the door swings open again, letting in a gust of icy wind. It’s a good thing his apartment is nearby; Roy doesn’t relish the idea of being caught out in this weather for—

Time stops.

Or rather, time doesn’t stop at all; Roy just feels as though it does—something deep in his chest goes _crack_ and shatters into tiny, tiny pieces as he turns—just barely—towards the door and catches in the corner of his eye an unmistakable head of golden hair.

For god’s sake.

It’s not fucking true. It’s not fucking true, but it _is_ , because Roy is standing there with one arm in the one sleeve of his coat frozen in place while Edward Elric—whom he hasn’t seen or heard from in probably more than nine lifetimes, at _least_ —kicks the door closed behind him, earning a scowl from one of the baristas, and saunters over with a shit-eating grin.

“Hey, Mustang,” he says casually, and Roy could pick up this tiny, ineffective coffee table and break it over his blindingly gold-spun flaxen head. He really could.

 

***

 

“Are you gonna say something?” Ed demands, “or are you just gonna stand there. I mean, it’s been, like, fucking nine lifetimes or some shit and I haven’t seen you in _forever_ and you better not have fucking forgotten about me or I’ll—mmf!”

Roy does the only thing he can think of to do, and kisses him. Hard. And the baristas collectively make little shuffling “oh, gosh!” noises and the other customers are either staring or raising their phones to take photos, so when Roy pulls back, and looks down at Ed—Ed, who is licking his lips in a very satisfied way—he says, “Outside.”

They leave, eyes following them until they turn a corner down the street and are out of sight.

 

***

 

Ed leans against the wall of the bus shelter, squinting out into the rain. It’s started to pour, sheets of water sweeping over the roads. Roy is torn between kissing Ed and shaking him out of sheer exasperation. _Say something! Anything! Let me know this isn’t all yet another godforsaken too-vivid dream, where I wake up in a few hours feeling even worse than I did before!_

“So you still remember me, then.” Ed says as if he’d heard Roy’s thoughts, turning to face him, and for the first time he seems—uneasy. “That’s good. I was kinda worried you might have forgotten.”

“You—Ed, how the hell could I forget _you_?” Roy asks, dumfounded, and he really doesn’t mean for it to sound like a cheesy pick-up line, but alas; he’s so bewildered that he forgets to be angry, so it does. Ed wrinkles his nose.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fuckin’ mesmerising, jeez, I _know_. But, uh, it’s been. A while. How’ve you been?”

“How have _I_ been?” Roy asks, incredulous, and despite the entire Ed-Era being a tangled muddy mess of gold hues and lingering touch, he knows deep down that this- _this-_ is entirely typical. “Ed—it’s—I haven’t seen you since—I’m still not entirely sure I’m not hallucinating this entire conversation, but—“

“I looked for you,” Ed interrupts him, eyes flashing up to meet his then down to fall somewhere around his scuffed boots, “in all my lifetimes, since—I fucking _searched_ , you know?” He shakes his head, hair rippling with the movement. Behind him, cars flash by on the glittering, rain-strewn road. Quieter: “I thought you’d _died_. Like, for real.”

Roy reaches out carefully, slowly—is this okay? What they had before was, well, _before_ ; Roy doesn’t know what Ed’s feelings are in this new, blank life—to brush his fingertips against Ed’s cheek. To trace, softly, the lines of his face.  
 Ed leans into the touch, eyelashes dipping. When Roy speaks, he finds his voice is barely above a whisper. He clears his throat.

“I- looked for you, too. I even hired a private investigator, actually.” Roy cracks a weak grin, looks away at the admission, half expecting Ed to recoil. Instead, he just laughs, the faintest hint of bitterness clouding his voice.

“You, too, huh?”

He opens his eyes—gold, gold, gold—and reaches up to wrap his fingers carefully around Roy’s wrist.

“I don’t know how this works,” he says, “this whole—lifetimes thing. Once, me and my brother had this theory, that each lifetime is like a new reality, a parallel dimension. I mean, multiverse theory dictates that fucking _anything_ is possible, so we thought, why not this? It’s gotta be…if a new reality opens every time one of us dies, then—god, Roy, the chances of us starting over in the _same_ one has gotta be _billions_ to one. It’s…”

He trails off, apparently unaware that as he spoke he’d pulled Roy’s hand away from his cheek and began to play with his fingers, lacing their hands together, testing the bend of each knuckle. Roy remembers—briefly—a dimly-lit bedroom, warm, sun-soaked sheets and Ed, running his hands over Roy’s body as if by touch he could examine the bones of each limb, the stretch of each ligament.

Roy finds himself thoroughly and not-inexplicably charmed.

“So what you’re saying,” he says, tugging Ed a step closer to him, raising their entwined hands to smooth Ed’s hair from his face—his cheeks heat, noticing for the first time their joined fingers—and smiling, “is that this must be fate.”

For one pure, undiluted second Ed stands there wordless, blushing furiously, and Roy wants, _needs_ , to kiss him, to remember fully every second they spent together, to overlay old memories with new moment, the miracle of creation. But then Ed shakes back his head, a smile turning his mouth wicked, and turns to press a distrait kiss to Roy’s palm, grazing with just an edge of teeth.

“Well,” he says,   breath hot against Roy’s fingers, standing there under the bus shelter with the rain sheeting behind him like a billowing curtain, a vision of dark gold, “it’s not a fucking _coincidence_ , that’s for damn sure.”

And then he pulls Roy in, draws him close, closer, takes of Roy’s breath for his own undoubtedly nefarious purposes, and kisses him with all the force of nine _fucking_ lifetimes spent apart and yearning.

 

***

 

The bus shelter, Roy decides, is lacking. There are no seats, so they have to lean against the wall or risk the damp cold concrete of the pavement. And the walls are transparent plastic; there is no privacy in here and though Roy’s never been the type to dismiss exhibitionism—after all, he thinks, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it—he has a sneaking suspicion that Ed _is_ the type, and it’s really not fair for him to be standing there in a slightly-too-big-hoodie and scarf with his hair tousled like that.

Roy watches a spider spin its web slowly, thread by thread, and is reminded of the incomprehensibility of everything that happens to him. Not for the first time, he marvels at how ridiculous his and Ed’s situation is. How utterly unprecedented it is that he’s _here_.

As Ed said, it’s certainly not a coincidence. How can it be? Nothing has ever been that easy.

Ed is wearing a scarf, blood red and encompassing, over a soft black hoodie; he buried his nose in it, scowling at the weather. “I’m freezing.” He complains. “How long ‘til we have to say fuck it and make a run for it?”

Roy says: “My apartment is ten minutes away. Possibly less, depending on how accurate your definition of _make a run for it_ is.”

Ed leans up and kisses Roy again, lingeringly: Roy’s brain makes a play equivalent to a lightbulb sparking and going dark. Biting none-too-gently on Roy’s lower lip, Ed pulls back, slowly. His gesture is playful, but his eyes hold a longing, a _need_ , that Roy knows only too well. Ed grins.

“Race you.”

 

***

 

The apartment is dark and cold and everything Roy’s lives have been since he lost— _left,_ he thinks. _You_ _left him_ _. You_ died—Ed, and when they step through the door he feels suddenly embarrassed; all at once he notices the cracks in the plaster, the dust lining the shelves, the books and papers strewn over the tables. Ed doesn’t seem to mind. He just sighs, deep and feelingly, closing his eyes and tipping his head back as Roy closes the door behind them and flicks on the light switch.

His cheekbones stand out sharp, his damp hair is dark gold with water. Roy can scarcely believe this is happening.

Rain batters at the windows, and Roy leads the way to the kitchen, flicking the switch on the kettle, fetching mugs from the cupboard. Ed sits on the counter and watches him keenly, seemingly content to sit there while saying nothing as Roy moves around the room.

Roy may not remember much, but he remembers how Ed likes his coffee.

It’s not even a memory, as such as it’s instinct, familiarity; he feels, deeply, that he’s done this same routine hundreds of time before, heaping three—no, _four_ —teaspoons of sugar into the cracked blue mug, two mounds of shitty coffee grains and no milk.  
The water sends swirls of steam into the air when Roy pours, slides the mug wordlessly across the counter towards Ed who takes it, wrapping his hands around it.

His hair is drying, slowly; the ends turning ever so slightly wavy. Atop Roy’s counter he looks like a painting, a riot of heavy gold and soft black and, now that Roy has gotten over the first initial rush of _he’s here!_ and looked closer, there are hints of purple thumbprints pressed beneath his eyes, a testimony to sleepless nights.

They stay there for a long time, it feels like, taking slow, measured sips of their drinks as the sky darkens, the sun sinks below the horizon, and they fall into each other’s orbit. It’s so _real_ , and yet at the same time not real _enough_. It’s as if Roy is living a dream, a half-remembered dream that has started coming back to him in tiny fragments. Occasionally Ed will make some tiny movement, like brushing back a strand of hair, and Roy’s attention will zone in on one minuscule detail like the curve of his neck or the arch of his eyebrow and he’ll think, _oh, yes. He used to do that, then._

All at once, he can’t stand it. He sets his mug down, ready to say something, to confront this- _thing,_ between them, because for once Roy doesn’t have the slightest clue how to act and it’s unsettling to say the least—

And then Ed jumps down from the counter, expression fiercely determined, and seizes Roy by the collar.

The kiss is hot, wet; Ed tastes of coffee and rain and desire—and he’s _strong_ (an image of Ed from a different time slots itself into Roy’s head, suddenly: him grinning, turning back over his shoulder to say, with a flash of wickedness, _I have black belts in three different martial arts, Mustang, I’m not gonna_ die), he pushes Roy backwards to collide with the edge of the counter, pressing up into him with desperation.

Roy thinks, _so that’s how it is_.

He kisses back, slow, controlled; Ed fights, always so restless, so willing to turn their every encounter into a battle, and Roy breaks away to suck gently on the skin at the join of his neck and his jawline. Ed shivers, sighs, eyes sliding closed again.

Well, this is certainly…effective.

Roy should’ve realised that Ed wouldn’t give a damn about talking it out—as always, his solution is to leap in headfirst and _physical_.

As the stars begin their slow wheel across the sky, shining valiantly through the smog that hangs over the city like a veil, Ed winds his fingers into Roy’s hair, tugging, and Roy finds his way back to Ed’s lips. With his eyes closed like this it’s easy to imagine them both in another life, where they had a life together and a place of their own: a gasp of fresh air in a torn-up city.

That life is gone.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. After all, it just means they’ll have to build themselves a new one, here, now: a clean slate. A fresh start. And Roy’s certain that not all the parts he doesn’t remember are necessarily _good_.

“You realise this is a shitty idea, right?” Ed says, breathless, voicing Roy’s tiny, darkest fears.

“Is this something—to do—with the—memory of me _dying_?” Roy asks, equally short on air, drunk and dizzy on Ed’s smell, Ed’s lips; it’s the most he can do to manage coherent speech—

“Somethin’ to do with it, yeah.” Ed agrees—and then they’re kissing again, palms sliding up under shirts, Ed’s hoodie on the ground and his boot laces tangling around both of their feet. His laughter is a bright thing, a living thing, helpless and bubbling as they trip on the trailing laces and fall. Roy thanks his own quick action that allows them to fall onto the bed, rather than in a heap on the floor.

Ed looks up at him, hands caught either side of Roy’s face. For a moment he stills, thumbs stroking gentle at Roy’s cheeks, eyes searching, gold on black. Roy gazes back, transfixed by those eyes, that face, these hands that he knows so _well_.

“This is a bad idea.” He tells him once more, and Roy can’t breathe.

“We can—stop.” He says, doubtfully, and Ed shakes his head so violently Roy can’t help but laugh.

“ _No_. I mean—no. Fuck, no. But…”

“But what, Ed?” Roy asks.

Ed’s mouth is a funny little quirk, like a half-grimace, rueful, full of pain. “I have a really fucking bad feeling that shit’s gonna go south again.”

Again. Like Roy—dying, apparently, like last time. He swallows.

Ed takes a deep breath. “I remember the in-between time,” he whispers, one hand slipping around to cling to the back of Roy’s neck like a lifeline, “a voice telling me not to fuck it up this time around. Tellin’ me to let you go. Or you to let _me_ go, I’m not—point is, Roy, I—“

“Shh, love,” Roy says, because Ed’s eyes are darkening, filling up with a bone-deep sadness that he should’ve _noticed_ , “It wasn’t your fault. We won’t let it happen again.”  
He barely remembers what _it_ was, but he knows that it was _bad._ And he knows that he won’t— _can’t_ —let history repeat itself. Not this time.

“Besides,” says Roy, “Do you really think I can let you go, now? When I just got you back?”

Ed grins a little at that, winding his other arm around Roy’s neck to join the other, pulling him slowly, inexorably, down.

“ _Can_ and _should_ are two very different things, Roy,” he says, uncharacteristically serious, before he kisses him.

 

***

 

Ed stays the night in the Roy’s bed. They cling to each other, a study in contradictions: _let him go._ Ed falls asleep eventually, warm and loose-limbed and Roy draws him closer, wraps his arms around him and buries his face in his hair.

 

***

 

And so it goes.

Day after day after day, Roy is lost in a haze of Ed, Ed, Ed.

Roy stares into bathroom mirror on a dreary morning, leaning on the edge of the sink, wreathed in shower steam. In the next room, Ed is brushing his hair and complaining loudly about the earliness of the hour.

His memory is returning in bits and pieces, the recall triggered by Ed’s presence, but Roy still only has the barest outline of what happened to so violently break them apart in the last life.

He remembers dying, his fast-fading vision and Ed’s hands on him, Ed’s face above him, fierce and blood-spattered: “ _Wait for me, Roy. I love you._ _”_

The last, aching kiss, Roy’s rising panic, “ _No_ _, take me back!_ _”_ The fight against the endless dark. The moment his strength breaks, and everything goes to black.

He remembers a brilliantly white space, void save for the looming dark stone gates. Strange words in other languages engraved delicately into their doors. And the voice, cheerful, mocking: “ _You’re back, then. Couldn’t even stay alive for him._ _”_

And then the worst part: the doors swinging open with a slow creak, Roy’s inability to resist the pull of whatever horrors lay within them; black tendrils reaching out and wrapping around his limbs and dragging him in even as he fought to go _back_. The fall, the unfathomable dark, a pain as if his brain was being scoured inside and out—and then…silence. Like snowfall, like steam rising from the surface of a cup of coffee.

From what he remembers of the life itself, they’d been in a similar time to the one they lived now, maybe earlier. Twentieth century, perhaps? Above all, he thinks there was a war. Sometimes he wakes in the night, heart racing, eyes wide open and etched into his vision are rows upon rows of faceless soldiers, guns, barbed wire and the stench of death. The feel of heavy uniform material pressing in on him, oppressive. The ranks turn towards him, the sharp click of their heels. Some of them are barely old enough to be out of school.  They salute, as one.

Ed never asks him what they’re about. He just pulls Roy close, grips his hand tightly. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Roy hasn’t told him the details, and Ed doesn’t pry. After all, Ed has them too. Oftentimes it’s Roy doing the comforting, murmuring reassurances, affirmations. I love you. You’re safe. Just a dream.

He can’t stop thinking about what Ed said. _A voice telling me to let you go. Or you to let me go._ They don’t understand this reincarnation, this endless cycle of lives, but there are things that they know for certain: The white room, the doors, the voice.  
Ed doesn’t believe in god, but Roy has a feeling that whatever the Hell it is that talks to them in that blank empty void has got to be the closest thing to a deity that he’s ever met.

What did they do wrong last time? He knows that whatever it is, the answer lies in his lost memories.

A knock at the door tears him out of his thoughts.

He calls, “Come in,” and Ed enters, balancing two mugs in the crook of his arm.

“Hey,” he says and comes to stand by Roy, offering up one of the mugs, “brought you some coffee. You okay?”

Roy looks down at him, all five-foot-something of half-dry gold hair slung into a low ponytail and one of Roy’s light blue shirts that he immediately appropriated falling almost to his knees. It gapes over his collarbones, revealing a large scar by his right shoulder. That, too, is familiar.

Roy traces the slightly raised edge of it, and thinks about how Ed carries so many stories, tales that Roy’s only really heard the vaguest silhouettes of: near-misses and knife fights and age-old hurts, and how he hopes to whatever gods are listening that he has a lifetime to learn them all.

He wishes he could guarantee a rerun of this in the next life: even if one or both of them have to die, at least they’ll have had this. Sleepy morning, soft grey evenings, Ed leaving hastily scrawled messages for him on post it notes that say ‘soy milk ONLY’ and ‘ur desk WOBBLES’. Two in the morning coffee runs, or ordering takeout in their pyjamas.

And the promise of another lifetime, just around the corner. The promise of another run-through.

It’s so familiar to Roy, now, as if the lives he’s led have all bled into one, long, endless life, marred only by death, like some morbid clockwork, every few years.

And yet he doesn’t understand, now, how he did it, these past however-many cycles, without Ed with him, leaning up to press a kiss to his jaw, wiping toothpaste on his nose and spilling his coffee in the sink when he laughs.

 

***

 

When it all starts to fall apart, as they both knew it would, it does so on a Saturday.

It’s a calm and clear morning—nice, Roy thinks, for the beginning of the end of the world.

He doesn’t have to leave for work (an unremarkable job at a business firm) today, so they sleep in, making the most of the warmth. Memories—or dreams, whatever they are—buzz around the inside of Roy’s head, waking him to disorientation; a few seconds of unreality before he reasserts himself. Ed stirs beside him, hair spread around him like a cape, face scrunching in protest at the bright morning light. He yawns and rolls over, bare skin tanned gold, fine white lines crossing it in some places. More scars. More stories.

Roy turns to the window. Through a gap in the curtain he sees thick cloud cover, grey and heavy.

“Looks like rain again.” He says, and Ed groans into the pillow.

“This weather sucks _ass_.” He says. “You know in my last life I’m pretty fucking sure I was in the desert or some shit. There was this massive fucking city with white marble columns and shit, it was great. And it was _always sunny_ and there wasn’t any fucking _rain_ or any of that bullsh—“

He stops abruptly and sits up, hair falling over his shoulder and Roy warily follows.

“What’s—?”

Ed shushes him, eyes narrowed. He looks as if he’s listening hard for something.

“Did you hear that?” He asks, voice low. Roy shakes his head—hear _what_?—but Ed’s already moving; jumping out of bed in one smooth, fluid movement that has Roy momentarily distracted from whatever the hell is going on. Ed in just his boxers. Roy would probably forget about a nuclear apocalypse for that.

And then Ed’s beckoning to him, tugging on jeans, a sweater. Roy’s tumbling out of bed to follow him.

“Ed,” he starts, lowering his voice to a whisper, but Ed holds up a hand to silence him, moving to the bedroom door.

“There are people in the hall.” He says, quietly, and Roy hasn’t seen him like this in this lifetime—alert and wary and moving with practised and deadly grace—but he’s certainly seen it before.

Roy hears it too, then, scuffed footsteps and gruff voices barking orders. Commands.

The police?

“Are you a fugitive?” He asks Ed, not because it’s hard to believe, but because he really would have liked some _prior warning_ —

“We’re _all_ goddamn fugitives,” says Ed, looking around for an escape route. “What, you mean they haven’t approached you before? Ever?”

“ _Who_?” Roy asks, as Ed eases open the bedroom door, poking his head out into the hall.

“Where’s your fucking fire escape?” he hisses instead of answering the question, and Roy throws up his hands in exasperation. The rest of his apartment is still dark, sunlight blocked by the drawn blinds. The floor is cold on his bare feet. Ed is pulling on his boots, staring at the door as if he expects it to be broken down at any second.

“Put some shoes on,” he says, “Come on, come _on,_ we have to _go_ _—“_

There are three sharp knocks at the door, and the buzzer sounds.

They both freeze.

Roy snatches up his shoes, shoving his feet into them and Ed pushes him bodily into the kitchen, closing the door behind the two of them.

“Okay,” he says, “okay, the window—go, fucking _go_ —“

“Who are we running from?” Roy asks, yanking the window open, clambering up onto the countertop and easing himself out with all the grace of someone who has never executed a daring broad-daylight escape out of a window before. His apartment is on the third floor and the sight of the drop makes his stomach clench, but luckily they’re facing away from the street and there are several jutting ledges placed strategically beneath him to climb down.

Even so, it’s a miracle that he makes it to the ground without injury. Ed is significantly more skilled; he shuts the window behind them and makes his way down soundlessly, dropping form ledge to ledge as if he’s spent the past hundred lifetimes doing just that.

Maybe he has. Roy wouldn’t know.

Safely on the ground, Ed faces him, face drawn. Roy folds his arms.

“Ed, what the hell is going on?” He asks. “Why are we running? Who are those people?”

There is a beat where Ed chews on his lip, and then he blinks furiously and takes hold of Roy’s arm, pulling him down the narrow side street they’ve exited on.

“We have to keep moving,” he says, “let’s just lose them, okay? And then I’ll tell you. I can’t _believe_ you haven’t been caught before, lucky _bastard_ —“

And then he’s dragging Roy out of the side street and into the thronging crowd on the main road; Saturday is market day in this part of the city, and it provides excellent cover. Ed weaves through the crowd like a professional, and at this point Roy’s fairly sure that he _is_. They make their way up the main street and further towards the outskirts, sticking to large crowds and taking detours through tourist areas and stalls.

Eventually Ed slows down, though his grip on Roy’s hand doesn’t relent. He looks left and right, before pulling Roy down a small alleyway and into a small, relatively busy café advertising _The_ _Best_ _Tea_ _In_ _The_ _Country!_

They find a seat at the back, with a good view of the door and the rest of the café. Ed hunkers down on the bench, blowing out a long breath. When Roy order tea for them both, he wrinkles his nose, but doesn’t complain. Which is unsettling, and strange.

Roy is incredibly aware of Ed’s paranoia (not unfounded) directed at the security cameras in the corner, the movement of people in and out of the door, the flashes of cars going by outside the window.

“What’s going on?” Roy asks again, quietly, and Ed licks his lips.

“Alright.” He says. “Fuck…I thought you’d _know_ about this shit, Roy, ‘else I’d have brought it up sooner. I guess you’ve done a good job of stayin’ under the radar, though.”

He takes a breath, glances up at the door again.

“So—there are these people, right? Government assholes who somehow find out about people like us. Reincarnates. They _find_ us and they take us in for _questioning_ —only it’s more like a fucking interrogation. And then, using a lot of legal and technical bullshit, explain that we’re not actually entitled to any rights whatsoever so they can do whatever the fuck they want with us.”

“And what do they want with us?” Roy asks softly, even though he has a sickening feeling that he already knows.

Ed smiles. There is nothing humorous about it.

“To do tests, mostly.” He says. “Brain scans and tissue samples and X rays and a bunch more nasty shit. They wanna figure out what makes us _work_ ‘cause somehow they know what we do, and they know that it’s real, but they don’t understand it. And it pisses ‘em off.”

Roy doesn’t ask how Ed knows all this. He doesn’t have to.

“And now they’ve found us.” He says. Ed nods, eyes drifting briefly shut.

“Shit, Roy,” he says quietly, “I really—I really fucking thought it was gonna be okay this time. You know? I really _fucking_ thought—“

Roy takes his hand. At some point they had let go of each other’s fingers and Ed started twisting his into knots in his lap; Roy untangles them, intertwines them with his own.

He remembers a battlefield, the strain of commanding an army of innocent young people who were dying for a cause no one in their right minds should _ever_ believe in. He remembers wondering how the hell he got in this position, wishing that he could just start over again, like always. He remembers Ed, dressed in the same dark military clothes, grim-faced. _“We just have to get through this,_ _”_ the Ed in his memory says, eyes fiercely bright, “ _we just hafta get through this shit and then_ _—we’re_ out, _we’re free, we can go back to the house or_ _—hell, Roy, we can go wherever the fuck we_ want _. Just as soon as we get through this.”_ And he remembers confrontation, Ed snarling and spitting as he’s dragged away, Roy sees gun barrels and a man is standing before him wearing a smirk and an overcoat. He says, _I always knew it was you._

He blinks, images swimming before him. “Last time,” he says, “it was them, wasn’t it? They found us then, too.”

Ed nods, pale-faced and _angry_. “Those assholes,” he says, and his voice shakes with rage, “He fucking shot you, you know that? I couldn’t even—right in front of me. He fucking shot you. And I just— _snapped_ , you know? Went batshit fucking crazy.” His mouth curves into a bitter smile, remembering. “Serves ‘em right. Pretty sure I killed the ones holding me—I don’t even remember how. But the other one, the one who _shot_ you—he ran. More than anything, I wanted to go after him, drag him back and kill him like maybe I could trade his life for yours—but. I didn’t.”

“I remember.” Roy says, and they’re close now, Ed’s eyes dark and molten with the memory of it. Roy squeezes his fingers. “I remember, now—you told me to wait for you. I did.” He smiles, though it’s not easy. “I’ve been waiting for _lifetimes_ , Ed.”

“And now that I finally found you,” Ed says, “the fucking SAS are out to get us. Typical.”

Roy laughs, unable to help it. Ed shakes his head.

“God, this is a fucking mess,” he says, staring down at their linked hands. “What the fuck are we gonna do?”

Around them, people drink their tea, chatting. In the background, music plays softly. Everywhere there are tiny stories playing out: this girl is on her first date, this man is showing his partner a picture of his new dog, these women are going on a road trip.

A road trip. That gives Roy an idea.

“Well,” he says, slowly, “we’re going to have to disappear. We can’t catch a plane; if they knew my address they’ll know our identification so we can’t use passports.”

“So we need a mode of transport where we don’t leave any traces,” says Ed, catching on and brightening. He starts to grin, “There’s a car dealer on the edge of town, near the scrapyard. I passed through on my way in; she sells used cars, cash up front, no questions asked.”

“Sounds perfect.” Roy says. His wallet and phone are already in his pockets from yesterday. They just need to find a cashpoint.

“Let’s fucking do this,” says Ed, leaping up from his seat, pulling Roy up with him. He turns to face him, and Roy could swear that his eyes are glowing, brilliantly gold and dancing. “What have we got to lose?”

Roy laughs, adrenaline lensing his voice an edge of wildness, bubbling out of him unbidden. “Quite a lot, really,” he says, “isn’t that the point?”

“Shut up, smartass,” Ed says, “And let’s _go_.”

So—Roy is still half in disbelief—are they really going to do this? They make their way out again, pushing open the door and stepping out into the crisp air, the sky hanging full and weighted with the threat of rainfall above them and the whole damn world below them, danger knife-sharp around Roy and the memories crowding his throat.

This is it, Roy thinks, and all he can concentrate on—besides the fact that they’re very likely walking towards their _deaths_ (don’t think about that, don’t think about that, it happened once and it’s not going to happen again)—is Ed’s hand in his, his grip like steel, anchoring him to that one, fleeting hope: _Please let this work. I can’t lose him. Not again._

 


	2. If The Seas Catch Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reincarnation, missing memories, and a star-crossed relationship with the golden haired boy intent on picking a fight with whatever god started this broken record.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE IT IS, THE LONG AWAITED SECOND CHAPTER  
> honestly, guys, im so sorry for the stupidly long wait. really. really really truly really. my excuses include: preppin for exams (12 days to go lmao not that im counting), writer's block, ~stress~ and also laziness. make of that what you will lmao  
> but YES it is HERE and i HOPE YOU ENJOY IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!! chapter title is, in continuation of the gr8 poem theme, from dive for dreams by my main man e.e.cummings. cool.  
> thanks to [felix](http://www.feeghost.tumblr.com) for supplying me with inspiration & shit <3  
> and also, thanks to you guys!!!!!!!! ur the best. thanks for reading my shit. im gettin emotional

 

 

As it turns out, being on the run is more or less exactly what Roy expected.  
It’s not often he gets to say that- ordinarily he wouldn’t have expected less on-the-wire actual _running away_ and more technicalities, but Ed seems to live all his lives in the same general way: as if he’s the main character of an action-thriller movie, complete with snarky one-liners and a frankly unnecessary number of explosions.

The sun beats down on them through the windscreen of the ancient Land Rover and Roy glances over to the passenger seat. It’s his turn to drive, which wouldn’t be a good thing, but again, ordinariness seems to take a vacation whenever Ed gets involved- so Roy’s actually glad to be in control of the vehicle for once. Ed is a _terrible_ driver.  
 Roy feels qualified to comment on this, considering he’s spent the last thousand or so lifetimes believing _himself_ to be the worst driver in existence- but Ed really doesn’t do anything by halves. Including his attempts to run them off the road and into the ditch at the side.

“How far ‘til the rest stop?’ Ed asks, slouched halfway down his seat with his feet up on the dash, head tipped back, dark sunglasses covering most of the top half of his face. He’d found them in the glovebox, along with several suspicious-looking boxes of pills and a knitted beanie. Ed’s hair is draped over the headrest; the effect makes him look both hilarious and unfairly attractive, shrouded in gold. The strands glint in the sunlight, and Roy swallows hard.

He dares to take his eyes off the road for a brief second to check the map laid out on the centre console- the map that Ed is _supposed_ to be using to help navigate, instead of leaning back doing fuck-all. Roy tells him so, and receives a gesture instructing him to do something anatomically questionable in return.

“We’ve still got about nine miles until the next stop,” he says, and Ed groans, reaching up to slide the sunglasses onto his head so he can glare uninterrupted at the miles of sun-bleached road stretching out before them. They’re making good time, Roy thinks; they’ve been driving for about six hours now, stops not included, and they’re already out of one state and making their winding way past another.

“Fuckin’ _hell,”_ Ed says, hair sliding from the top of the headrest to fall in ribbons around his shoulder as he shakes his head from side to side, “I’m _hungry_. You got any more cereal bars?”

“I thought you hated cereal bars,” says Roy dryly, thinking back to their conversation two hours before, when Ed had rummaged through Roy’s bags for edible items and come up with a handful of granola bars and a Snickers.

“I do,” Ed says, flicking the empty Snickers wrapper morosely with his toe. “But I’ve reached the point of starvation where I’m willing to put myself through gross-chewy-oat-hazelnut shit if it means _sustenance_ , Roy.”

Roy flips down the sun visor, and thinks about reaching across and patting Ed on his golden head. Better not risk it. They’ve survived this far in their impromptu cross-country roadtrip away from armed government agencies; he’d rather not be responsible for killing them both in a car accident when Ed attacks him in retaliation.

“Too bad,” he says, “I finished them an hour ago when you were complaining about the air conditioning.”

“Fuck you,” says Ed, kicking the dashboard. “ _And_ this shitty air conditioning.”

 

***

 

The junkyard was like the elephant graveyard from _The Lion King:_ carcasses picked clean and left with only the inedible bones bared to the cloudless sky: a deserted city built from piled up sun-bleached cars and jagged ribs of scrap metal.  
The air was freezing, made slightly warmer by Roy’s stewing silence: Ed had stolen his phone right from his back pocket and, without a word, dropped it onto the pavement and crushed it underfoot. Roy’s protestations had been met with a shrug and a “you realise this is the entire fucking _government_ we’re running from, right? You think they can’t track your phone?” and when Roy had said “we could’ve _sold_ it; you didn’t need to _stamp on it_ -,” he’d just turned away, tossed his hair out of his face and told Roy to _chill out_.

Right then Roy wasn’t sure if he _was_ happy to see Ed, much less to spend the foreseeable future driving merrily around the country with him.

 

And speaking of people who weren’t happy to see Ed, a voice rang out behind them as they ventured deeper into the metal skeleton: “Oh, god, not _you_ again.”

The voice, Roy discovered as he attempted to control his breathing, came from a girl with long blonde hair and several dangerous-looking tools tucked into her belt. She wore a jumpsuit and combat boots of the kind that put Ed’s to shame, and an expression of extreme distaste that only heightened as she stared them down, eyeballing first Ed, then moving to Roy.

Ed made a noise like an enraged cat. “What do you mean, ‘ _you again’_?” he demanded, and the girl snapped her gum, pulling a large, heavy-looking wrench out of her belt. She span it around her finger threateningly.

“Exactly what I _say_ ,” she replied, brows raised. “You tore through here like a tiny thundercloud and you didn’t even stop to _apologise_ for scuffing my baby.” She pointed the wrench at a corner of the scrapyard, and Roy saw a- was that a _Ferrari 250 GTO?_ – firebrick-red car peeking out from behind a pile of what looked like stacks of corrugated iron.  
It seemed to shine, like a very fast and very expensive bug lure. There was a small scratch marring the paintwork, just visible above one of the headlights; the sort of scuff that could come from, say, a small, blond demon careening around the corner without looking.  
The girl’s eyes narrowed alarmingly, and Roy started wondering if he should dive for cover.

 

Ducking into the small workshop deep in the belly of the scrapyard, Roy found himself wondering if they were going to leave this place alive, or if the blonde girl- “Winry Rockbell,” she’d said, shaking Roy’s hand. She had a very strong grip. He tried his best not to massage his hand when she released him with a grin- had lead them here as part of an elaborate ploy to kill them and hide their bodies in this metal cemetery of cars and probably a few rude customers.

“Mister Garfiel?” Winry called, hopping up onto a workbench shoved against the far wall and motioning for Ed and Roy to come in closer. “I brought some _buyers_.”

There was the faint sound of squeaking metal, then the rumble of wheels, and a figure slid out from underneath the car taking up all the room in the centre of the workshop, bouncing to his feet with a beaming smile.

“Winry! How’s the Ferrari?” Contrary to Winry’s _the more I see of you, the more distrustful I am of you and your ability to harm my cars_ , Mister Garfiel appeared to grow happier at the sight of visitors. Or maybe it was the sight of potential buyers? At that point, Roy was willing to take whatever slack he could get.

“It’s doing fine,” she assured him, sending a glare Ed’s way, who returned it with a scowl of his own, leaning against the wall, “no thanks to _this_ idiot. I fixed the gas cylinder and added a few…modifications.”

Even in the gloom of the tiny workshop, Roy could see Winry’s smiles stretch wide across her face. He fought the instinct to turn tail and run.

“ _Incroyable_ , Winry, my dear, I’m so lucky to have you working here-,”

“You’re damn right you are,” said Winry, but she didn’t sound angry anymore. Roy fought a sigh of relief; he’d have to file that mollification tactic away: flattery, flattery, and flattery. And fervent praying to whatever god may be listening.

“Now!” said Garfiel, clapping his hands and turning to Roy and Ed brightly, “what can I do for you lovely gents?”

 

It turned out that procuring a getaway car was only marginally more difficult to what he’d seen in movies. Granted, in most of those movies the protagonists fleeing from the law already had deep and meaningful connections to the shady car dealers, and all they had to do was ta a few buttons on their phones before a cut scene to them speeding across the desert with a dust cloud billowing out behind them to the beat of some badass 80s rock anthem.

For two fugitives with only Roy’s meagre bank withdrawals and Ed’s mysterious duffle bag full of cash- really, Roy didn’t want to know. He’d just produced it from absolutely nowhere when they’d gone back to Roy’s apartment two hours ago under cover of dusk to collect the essentials (toothbrushes, toothpaste, miscellaneous bathroom supplies and Roy’s stash of _Nature Valley_ bars) and Roy _didn’t want to know_ \- to their names, they were doing alright, really.

Winry left to do something technical involving the hood of the car that Mister Garfiel was selling them while Roy counted out banknotes and Ed stood guard by the door of the workshop, glaring into the dusk as if daring a SWAT team to burst in.

Mist was curling through the half-crushed car-bones (“ _car-_ casses,” said Roy, straight-faced, and Ed punched him in the arm so hard he lost all feeling in it) by the time they’d signed paperwork and shaken hands and Winry had bounded back in with a streak of machine oil on her cheekbone and a wicked grin.

“It’s all yours,” she said, pointing out the car with her wrench- and _what_ a car. A not-too-new, not-too-old, worn silver monster of a four-by-four. Not so desperate to blend in that it stood out, and not too flashy that it stood out even more. Normal. Average. A car that one would look at and pass right by; perfect for a cross-country roadtrip. Perfect for living out of, potentially, should they run out of cash for motel rooms; the backseat was wide enough for sleeping on, at any rate.

“’S pretty badass,” Ed conceded, which translated to a flawless ten out of ten.

“It’s perfect,” said Roy, “thank you- really. Thank you.”

Winry smiled happily at him. “Hey, no problem,” she said, twirling her wrench, “it’s a pleasure doing business with you! Backroad leads out of the city _that_ way,” she said, pointing to a pathway fringed by walls of dead cars, “takes you straight to the open road. Good luck.”

Garfiel handed him the keys and the fake paperwork, and Ed glanced up at Roy, mist pooling around his boots.

“Ready?” Roy asked.

“Born ready,” Ed says, and Roy had to admit, he could taste the anticipation of it on the tip of his tongue.

 

***

 

Afternoon, now, and Ed is dozing, or maybe not dozing; he stares blindly into the distance, cheek pressed against the window, legs curled beneath him. His boots are sure to leave marks on the seats. Roy doesn’t disturb him. The look in Ed’s eyes is- sad, almost; Roy can’t help glancing at him every now and then as if to check he’s still _there_ ; he’s unaccustomed to the silence.

There’s a turn-off coming up on the left. The sign by it shows symbols for a diner and a gas station, and Roy breathes a sigh of relief- they’ve been running uncomfortably low for the last half-mile or so, and according to the old maps Ed had found in the glovebox, this’ll be the last chance they have to fill up the tank for a while.

He pulls into a cramped car park at the back of the diner- no motel, but it’s open twenty four hours, so Roy supposes they have that to be thankful for.

Ed is still staring disconnectedly out of the window, hair ruffling slightly in the blast of cool air from the fan, and Roy reaches over to jostle his shoulder gently. In the window, his reflection blinks, and he turns.

“What?” he asks, almost-dazedly, and then his gaze sharpens and his eyes light up. “A diner! Food! Oh, thank _fuck,_ I thought I was gonna starve out here-,”  
He fumbles with his seatbelt, manages to extricate himself with minimum injury and maximum swearing, and trips out of the car without a backwards glance, hightailing it to the door before Roy has a chance to blink.

Honestly, Roy doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He all but signed up for this, after all.

 

Somewhere in the back of the diner, past the rows of mostly empty shiny red booths and greasy silicon surfaces, a boom box is playing a static rendition of an Elvis song. Ed dumps packet after packet of sugar into his coffee with a single-minded kind of intensity unique only to him, and Roy can’t seem to stop staring at the miniscule glittering granules spilling from the torn white paper.

He blinks after an eternity of watching the sugar crystals glint at him from the tabletop, and stirs his coffee.

Ed sighs and leans back against the wall of their booth. They chose a table tucked away in the corner- not that it matters; they’re almost the only ones here this time of night, in this lonely roadside diner on this lonely stretch of road. And the tourist-looking group collapsed loudly at a table on the other side of the room seem to be more interested in their card game than in the two of them.

“I want pancakes,” Ed announces, tossing the last sugar packet onto the table. Roy raises his eyebrows.

“ _Do_ you.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, always ready to rise to a challenge. “I do, actually, so fuck you, Mustang.” He catches the eye of the one server standing idle by the bar, tapping at their phone. “Hey, yeah- can I get the, uh, eight pancake stack? With maple syrup. And bacon. Thanks.”

“Sure,” says the server, and look expectantly at Roy.

He sighs. “Another coffee, please,” he says, and Ed rolls his eyes.

“Plus cheese fries,” he says to the server, and turns back to Roy after they’ve walked away. “You gotta _eat_ something, Mustang- don’t give me that fuckin’ look I _know_ you haven’t had anything all day except for those goddamn cereal bars. _Sustenance_ is what you need.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” Roy murmurs, and Ed looks scandalised.

“I _don’t_ ,” he says, “it’s self preservation. If you pass out from lack of food while driving, then even my excellent reflexes might not save my ass before we crash and die in a fiery blaze.”

“Admitting to one of your shortcomings of your own volition? I never thought I’d see the day.”

Roy takes a slow sip of his coffee.

Ed takes a deep, slow breath, places his palms flat against the table, and leans forward.  
  
“Mustang,” he says, “Was that a _fucking_ height joke?”  
  
The threat in his voice says _think before you speak if you want to keep your vital organs where they are,_ and while Roy is objectively quite fond of his spleen, he can’t resist; no one could resist a chance like _this_ -

“It was, but I understand if it went a little over your head,” he says, demurely, and Ed gives a strangled shrieking sound and launches himself bodily over the table.

  
 When all’s said and done, the coffee didn’t go on anyone- not Roy, nor Ed, or the poor kid probably just trying to earn their way through college with this night shift just all over the table and the seat. They cleaned it up as best they could- Ed with the maximum amount of grumbling possible, of course- with the napkins, and at least the bored-looking kid on the night shift got some excitement and a story to tell, right?

The backpackers on the other side of the room are still too engrossed with whatever hilarious story they’re reliving, judging by the exaggerated gestures and too-fucking-loud-it’s-the-middle-of-the-night exclamations, and Ed settles back into his seat eventually, glowering like a pissed off cat over his half-demolished pancake stack. Roy hopes the food appeases him; he’s not sure if he can handle driving however-many-miles tomorrow (today? He’s lost track of time; the days are blurring into one) with an angry Ed in the passenger seat.

Across the room, one of the backpackers laughs and punches the guy on his other side in the arm. “That’s my little brother for you!” he says loudly, leaning back in his chair, and Ed’s eyes tighten noticeably.

Roy wonders if he has family out there somewhere, a relic of a life he could’ve had. His questioning must have shown in his face, because Ed eyes him critically before he leans back, flicking his eyes t Roy in a coded gesture that says quite clearly, _go on, then_. When did he get so adept at reading Ed’s moods, his closely guarded expressions? Roy doesn’t know if this is echoes slowly returning to him from the life they had together, or if he’s relearning it all again; truthfully, it doesn’t matter. He pushes his coffee cup in a circle by the handle.

“It’s strange,” he says at last, watching the liquid in the mug splash bravely against the sides, skimming the rim and tumbling back down into the pool. “That every lifetime is so wildly different. I’d have thought that family, at least, might stay the same, but some lifetimes I don’t even think I _have_ one.”

Ed cocks his head, an unconscious motion of intense concentration.

“What’re they like?” he asks, and Roy can’t help but wonder if they’ve had this conversation before.

“It follows the same vague storyline, in general,” he says, “My parents die when I’m young and I’m taken in by an aunt, or sometimes a family friend.” His coffee mug has turned full circle; he runs a finger along the shiny china handle. “I think- some lifetimes I’ve had best friends, Maes and Riza. Some lifetimes we spend together, and I invariably fall in love with one or both of them, and it either ends terribly or better than I could’ve hoped for. And some lifetimes they don’t exist at all.”

His memories, he tells Ed, usually come back at his early teenage years, although they’re never complete: the blank void, the voice, the _knowledge_ that he’s lived before again and again…flashes of memory arriving disjointed and half-blurred, enough for him to piece together the outlines of lives he’s spent before but never enough for him to know the full stories.                                                                                                                                                           

It feels almost- intimate; revealing aspects of his own lifetimes like this. Talking about his experiences is intensely personal, and there is something incredibly _sacred_ about knowing that they are likely the only two people in this world who can share in this.

Ed nods, slowly, eyes half-narrowed and far away. “It’s like you said about your friends- Maes and Riza. Sometimes he’s there, sometimes he isn’t. MY brother,” he says, looking up at Roy with a half-grin on his face, wistful. “Al. He’s the best. I remember- most of it, I think, but there’s _so much_ that it all stacks up and it’s fucking difficult to differentiate, but- yeah. I remember- him. My little brother. I always try and protect him,” he says, and there’s that grin again, jaded with the kind of unspeakable sadness that Ed gets in his eyes sometimes that makes Roy want to hold him for a long time.  
“But, you know, Murphy’s Law and that bullshit. Never works.” He shakes his head helplessly, smiling. “He’s always so fucking _happy_ , you know? And in the lifetimes when he’s not there, it’s like something’s horribly fucking wrong. It- I miss him. A lot. But he didn’t get dealt the shitty lifetime loop card, so he’s _not_ there all the time.”

“What about your parents?” Roy asks, coffee forgotten and quickly going cold, anyway.

Ed snorts unattractively. “What about ‘em?” HE asks, and shakes his head. “Mom’s dead. Always is. Dad’s fucked off god knows where; good fucking riddance as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes me and Al run into him and we have a screaming argument and he drops a couple cryptic fucking hints before he leaves again, and- shit, I don’t know. I think he might be one of us,” he says, offhandedly, and Roy almost puts his elbow in his coffee cup.

“ _What_?” By ‘one of us’, he means- he’s got to mean-

Ed scowls, moving his fork around his plate agitatedly. “Shut up, I don’t _know_ ,” he says, “just- he says shit, and it gets me thinking. And he _always_ fucking turns up, even if it’s just for a second to piss me off before he goes and does whatever the fuck he does for fun. And he always _knows_ shit; like he asks about Al in lifetimes where Al doesn’t fucking exist, and it’s just-,” he stabs a sugar packet with the fork with a _crunch_. “It’s fucking annoying,” he mutters finally. “And he never _fucking_ answers any of my questions.”

Roy stares at him. It makes sense, he supposes; someone as extraordinary as Ed could only have come from an extraordinary family, but _still._ He’s pretty damn certain Ed’s never mentioned this before- _never_.

“Have you ever, I don’t know,” he says, tentative because Ed looks even more pissed off than earlier now, and he really doesn’t want a replay or Ed leaping across the table at him, screaming. “…Thought about finding him? Maybe he’d answer your ques- or, you could continue not doing that,” he says hurriedly as Ed’s head snaps up and he locks gazes with Roy, “That’s fine too.”

“I,” says Ed, very dangerously, “am _never_ seeking that bastard out. I don’t _care_ what he knows; I don’t _care_ who he is, he can fuck off and _die_ for all the fucks I give- he _abandoned_ us.”

His eyes glitter and Roy draws a difficult breath under his searing glare. “What- do you mean?”

Ed looks away in a single savage movement, all the lines of his body taut and strung with violent tension. “My mom’s dead,” he says, “and that bag of dicks is the reason _why_.”

 

…Oh.

_Oh._

“Yeah,” says Ed, tossing the sugar packet away from him; it skids across the table and bounces off Roy’s abandoned coffee mug, setting the lukewarm liquid shivering and rippling with the shock. “if the asshole hadn’t _left_ \- every _fucking_ lifetime and if he really is one of us then he should _know_ , shouldn’t he? Shouldn’t he try and fucking _save_ her?- she would still be alive. Sometimes it’s a freak accident. Sometimes it’s an illness that she kept hidden. Every time, it’s something that could’ve been _prevented_ if there was _someone there who knew_.” Ed dashes his hand furiously across his face: these are tears of rage, and Roy doesn’t blame him for them.  
“If _I_ knew- but my fucking memories never come back ‘til I’m, like, twelve and by then it’s _too late_ -,”

“Ed,” says Roy, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t,” says Ed, “Shut up. Fuck you. It’s fine.”

“No. I- understand you better, now. I know ‘I’m sorry’ never helps; god knows people’ve said it to me enough times for me to know it’s just an empty consolation- but I mean it. You got dealt a _shitty_ hand, and it’s not fair. There’s not enough justice in the universe to make up for something like this.”

Ed glares out of the window, red-eyed and resolute. “Yeah,” he says, gravelly. “If that ain’t the fuckin’ truth.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, that’s- why I don’t wanna talk about that bastard. Why I don’t wanna _mention_ him ever again. The only time I wanna hear about him is if we run him over or some shit, and even then I only wanna know so I can _laugh_.” 

“That’s fair,” says Roy, and lifts a hand to call for the bill. “That’s absolutely fair.”

 

 

Roy crosses the parking lot to the tiny convenience store on the other side, and stocks up on cereal bars and toothpaste and whatever else he can think of that they might need. When he’s paying he looks up at the TV behind the counter, half convinced that he’s going to see their names and faces splashed over the news with a reward for capture, dead or alive- but even when the channel changes and his heart constricts at the news headlines screen, there’s no mention of either of them.  
  
He doesn’t buy much, but what he does buy seems hideously overpriced- or maybe that’s just his rapidly draining cash supply talking. He knows that at some point, they’re going to run out of money, and at that point they’ll have to either rob a bank or find jobs- and if what Ed says about the government is true, he doesn’t know which prospect is more dangerous: committing a crime on the off chance they might not get caught, or putting themselves in a position where they could be recognised easy as breathing.

 

***

 

Ed sleeps as Roy drives; the stars wheel overhead and slowly, slowly, the sky fades from the darkest blue to the golden-peach hues of dawn. Ed’s head lolls against the window, hair matching perfectly with the shafts of dawn light streaking the crests of the mountains in the far distance; his eyelids flicker when the road- stretching endless before them; freedom at its finest- turns rough and Roy checks his speed, slows down so as not to jostle him too much.

Peace.

Roy glances at Ed more than a few times- however much he strives to keep his eyes on the road he can’t seem to help the way his gaze wanders to land on Ed. He also can’t seem to help the irrational fear that blossoms in his chest whenever he tears his eyes away again. The fear that when he looks back down, Ed won’t be there anymore.

He swallows, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. There is a sharp _tac_ sound and Roy almost dives for the glovebox and the gun before his fried nerves pull themselves together long enough for him to realise that the noise was a drop of rain hitting the windshield, and not the entire federal government catching up to them.

Slowly, Roy lets out a long breath, settles back into his seat. Spending time with Ed is making him jumpy. Or maybe he always has been, and he just hasn’t been out of his bubble long enough to realise it.

The rain hits harder and faster, tiny pellets striking and bouncing and rolling down the glass. Soon, Roy can’t differentiate between the individual droplets, and the gentle _plink_ has become a steady sheet. Every stroke of the windscreen wipers knocks away what must be a bucketful of water, only for it to be replaced a moment later. Roy has the urge to roll down the window and stick his head into the downpour, just to know it’s real.

A stupid urge, of course, and a dangerous one- but it’s there, nonetheless.

The rain is a wash of glassy tarmac, sluiced clean of dust and desert sand; even inside the car Roy is experiencing a heady kind of catharsis and it’s amazing, really, that he never even knew that this was what he needed. One sudden rainstorm, and the ache in his chest tightens, trembles, and breaks open. His throat feels tight. His grip on the wheel slackens as he runs a hand through his hair, and his helpless grin unfurls before he can check himself. _God_. This is so, so _fucking_ stupid; this whole damn escapade- what do they think they’re doing really, him and Ed? Trying to outrun the entire fucking government in an illegal four by four with an even more illegal gun mixing with the _Nature Valley_ cereal bars in the glove compartment. But their _lives_ are fucking stupid, aren’t they? Reincarnation, missing memories, and a star-crossed fucking relationship with a golden haired boy intent on picking a fight with whatever god started this broken record.

And then, just as quickly as the storm started, it ebbs.

The clouds overhead drain away like soap suds chasing down a plughole, and the sun appears like a long-lost lover from behind the covering of grey, and the only thing to prove that the sudden rainfall really happened is the afterimage of the raindrops splattered across the windscreen. And soon, Roy judges by the strength of the afternoon sun, they too will be gone.

A flashing light on the dashboard blinks him out of his thoughts; they’re running low on gas. Signposts are becoming less and less frequent the further they travel, but the one they’d passed a few miles back had said something about a motel coming up soon- or, at least, that’s what Roy _thought_ the symbol was. The sign had been so beat up- eroded by both dust and graffiti- it could’ve been anything, really.

“Maybe I’m too optimistic,” he mutters.

“Maybe you should stop talkin’ to yourself,” Ed says, lifting his head from the window with his hair flattened to his face on one side and his eyes still crumpled with sleep, and Roy lets go of the steering wheel in surprise.  
“Woah, woah, Mustang, no need to run us into the fuckin’ ditch! Jesus _fuck_ , I knew you were crazy but I didn’t ask for a _demonstration_ -,”

 

***

 

Roy is living in a low-budget romantic comedy, and this proves it.

“This is the only room you have?” he asks again, out of sheer desperation, and the woman behind the desk gives him a pitying look.

“Yep. One room, one bed.”

“Fine,” says Roy, handing over the money from their slowly dwindling supply of banknotes.

Ed’s not going to like it- but then again, Ed’s been complaining nonstop for days on end. It’s nothing new. And this is the first- and last- motel around here for miles, and Roy isn’t willing to go any longer without an actual shower, single beds be damned.

“Come on,” he says over his shoulder to Ed, and heads for the stairs. The tiredness is threatening to overwhelm him; there’s only so much sleep you can get sitting in the front seat of a car, and Roy has two things on his mind: hot water and a _bed_.

 

 

“Is it just me, or is your life the _worst_ movie ever?” Ed says, staring dismally- or at least as dismal as Ed ever gets, which is not very- at the bed in the middle of the room.

“It’s not just you,” says Roy, and drops their bags on the floor, shutting the door carefully behind them. This isn’t the worst motel he’s ever been in, but he’s also read a lot of stories online about people getting stabbed in rooms much nicer than this one. And while he’s sure an assailant with a knife would be no match for a woken-from-slumber, disorientated, angry Edward Elric, he’d really rather not hedge his bets.

Ed groans, and takes a flying leap at the bed, landing face-first in the centre of it, bouncing slightly. Despite himself, Roy’s kinda of impressed. Ed says something unintelligible into the mattress.

“What was that?” Roy says, heading for the bathroom and for a _shower, god,_ it’s been _so long_ since hot water, and Ed lifts his head from the bed to scowl at him.

“I said ‘I call dibs on the extra pillows’,” he says, “and also, I want the side nearest the window. ‘Cause then if someone breaks in and tries to kill us, I’ll be able to reach the fire escape while you get murdered first.”

“How heroic of you,” says Roy drily, and waves a hand at him resignedly. “Have whichever side you want; I’m showering.”

“Oh, good,” says Ed, piling his pillows into a teetering stack, “you smell like shit.”

Roy sends a certain hand gesture his way and closes the bathroom door behind himself.

 

 

By the time Roy gets out of the bathroom again- feeling distinctly more human after showering and brushing his teeth; God bless motels with disposable toothbrushes- Ed is under the covers, phone screen lighting up his face- wait a second. Phone screen?

“Where did you get _that_?” Roy asks, incredulous; Ed stamped _his_ phone into thousands of pieces back at the elephant-graveyard-turned-car-cemetery- so how come _he_ gets one?

“Stole it,” says Ed, yawning.

Roy says nothing.

“What?” says Ed.

“You’re seriously asking me that?” Roy says, and Ed turns over to face him, scowling.

“Hey, look, this isn’t _my_ phone. Those asshole backpackers in the motel. You went to buy shit at the convenience store and they started harassing the kid working the night shift, so I sorted it out. One of ‘em thought he’d try some shit with me, so I sorted _that_ out too. The fucker’s not gonna miss his phone.”

Roy is having trouble processing everything that Ed has said in the past few minutes, but Ed seems to take his dumfounded silence as acquiescence, because he rolls back over and goes back to tapping away at the screen.

“You- ‘sorted it out’?” Roy asks faintly, and Ed makes a noise of extreme exasperation that Roy finds very unfair, actually.

“ _Yes,_ dumbass, I _sorted it out._ What, you think I shoulda just _let_ ‘em-?”

“No- no, of course not, just- God, I don’t know. I’m too tired to formulate a proper argument. Pretend I said something about how we should be keeping a low profile, and then we disputed back and forth about it for an hour until you got annoyed and shouted and I relented out of respect for the eardrums of everyone in the building.”

Ed’s face goes through a series of emotions that is very entertaining for Roy to watch. “ _Fine_ ,” he says at last, “You know what? Fine. And I’m gonna ignore that last fuckin’ comment, because I’m _nice_ like that. So _fuck you_.”

“Great,” says Roy, and means it.

Ed’s turned off all the lamps but the one on the bedside table, a small mercy that Roy is thankful for as he attempts to navigate his way through the room to the bed itself.

When he reaches it- in one piece thankfully, minus a stubbed, possibly-broken-hopefully-not toe- the bed sighs as he crawls under the covers, reaching out to flick off the light. Ed tosses his- _the-_ phone onto the bedside table as if Roy’s given him his cue to sleep.

For a long moment, there is utter silence as neither of them dares to breathe. Roy is intrinsically aware, with every single damned cell in his body, of the mere nine centimetres between him and Ed under the bedsheets.

Ed lets out a comically loud breath, and the moment is broken. Roy uses the sigh as cover for him to shuffle into a more comfortable position.

“Where to tomorrow, then?” Ed asks, and Roy stares unseeingly up into the darkness of the ceiling, eyes having not yet adjusted to the dark.

“Who knows?” He replies, “I think we just follow this road, and then…find a city. Get lost in it. Make new identities.”

Ed swallows, shifting on the pillow. His hair rustles as it moves over the sheets; Roy hadn’t noticed him take out the hair tie and now can’t stop thinking about it, the length of it, the feel of it; soft and silken and rippling like gold ribbon.

“You think this is actually gonna work?” he asks quietly, and Roy looks skyward.

“Ed, this was _your_ idea-,”

“I know that! Shut up. I’m just- I genuinely wanna know. You think we can actually outrun them? Start again?”

 _Start again_. The words are weighted carefully, cautiously: Roy hears the question behind the question. A new start, for the two of them. Together.

“I hope so,” he says at last. God, he hopes so.

They’re both exhausted and they both know it, but they can’t sleep. Not like this, not with so much still unsaid between them. Not with Ed remembering everything and Roy still half in the dark and searching blindly for his own past.  
A sliver of moonlight through the crack in the curtains, not strong enough to illuminate anything, just strong enough to give the shadows a certain silver edge.  
The stars are so clear here. An entire universe that Roy never noticed, deep in the city centre. He wonders if he’s seen these stars before, in a different lifetime. Wonders if he’s ever felt so struck dumb by the enormity of everything, and how insignificant he is lying here in this motel room with his heart breathing evenly beside him with only a few inches separating them.

He takes a deep breath.

“Last time…” Roy pauses and Ed gazes at him, steadfast, flush high on his cheeks, the darkness a living thing in the tiny space between them, “I still don’t know what happened. I can’t remember properly; all I get are disconnected images. And I’d like to know.”

Ed breathes, shifting against the bedsheets. “Last time,” he says, and half-laughs. “God, Roy. Can’t you just-?”

“Leave it?” Roy asks. “You know I can’t.”

Blood and salt and bright flashes of colour, burning afterimages that Roy has to sort through as if he’s decoding an encryption. Buildings toppling; crowds obscured by cascading waterfalls of dust.

Ed swallows. “Yeah. Figured as much.”

It’s a unique feeling, teetering on the edge of a revelation, a secret that’s been plaguing you for _lifetimes._ All the nights Roy’s lain awake in his shitty apartment wondering, wondering: who the hell am I? What does all this _mean_?

He’s never been much of an existentialist, but when you’re cursed (gifted? Blessed?) with this kind of existence, it’s difficult not to ask yourself the big questions.

“It was kinda like this, actually,” Ed says, and the smile that twists his lips is painful to look at. “We met in a city, modern day-ish…you were sitting in that café looing ready to murder someone and Al pointed you out when we went in. It was, like, 5am and me and Al were on our way to the labs- he was in college even though by all rights he should’ve been teaching the course himself, and I had a job at the research department. I almost dropped my coffee on you when we walked past and you apologised to me about it, even though you’d had a shitty day and it was completely my fault.” He sighs. Roy is barely breathing.  
“I saw you a couple times in there; we bonded over, like, how fucking terrible Mondays were and how fucking great that place’s coffee was, and I guess one day it just sorta became _more_ , you know?”

 _No,_ Roy wants to scream, _I_ don’t _know, and I wish I_ did _; that’s the_ problem.

“And you asked me on a date and we did all that shit, and Al really liked you even though he did a good job of givin’ you the ‘if you hurt my brother I’ll pour acid in your eyes as you sleep’ speech. And at some point I stopped pulling away and started thinkin’, you know, maybe for once in my life-lives- this shit’s actually gonna _work_.” He laughs, once.

“I’m a bad penny, Mustang, I’ve told you that before and you _never_ fucking listen. Usually the people I- fall for, or whatever, end up dead or worse.

“So I was scared, really _fucking_ scared. But you…didn’t care. I told you everything, and you didn’t _care_ , you said-,” he hesitates, “Fuck. You said it didn’t matter, and you didn’t mind if you _died_ , because it was worth it if you got to spend that life with –with me.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. Roy is- struck dumb by it all; he had no idea. He had no idea. Again, he curses his inability to _remember_ , curses the luck that put them in this situation. He swallows, throat tight. He wants to move, wants to put his arm around Ed, wants to tell him it’ll be okay, that it won’t be like that this time.  
He wants to reach out and find some way- with words, with actions, with interpretive dance if that’s what it comes to- to _show_ Ed that he’s _sorry_.  
That the self-loathing Ed feels (“ _I’m a bad penny, Mustang,”_ ) is lying to him. He wants Ed to know, more than anything, that he is the best thing that’s ever happened to Roy. That he would give up everything for him; that nothing has changed since that last lifetime when he told him he didn’t care about the consequences- he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

It scares him- but it’s been weeks, now, driving through the desert and the rain, relearning everything that used to be like second nature to him: the twist to Ed’s lips when he understates how tired he is, the specific shade of his eyes when he’s angry, the tiny sighs he makes when he’s sad, or cold…  
Roy has had weeks to recover everything he lost when he died in that past life, and now that he’s found it again, like finding buried treasure at the bottom of a long, dark pit, he cans safely say that no matter how _this_ lifetime ends, he’ll be content to have sent these past weeks with Edward Elric.

Roy takes a breath, ready to tell Ed all of this- but Ed shakes his head into the darkness beside him, and sniffs.

“Show’s how fucking much you know. Dumbass.”

He’s crying now, and Roy thinks he might be, too.

Ed takes another breath, and another, and another, and fixes his eyes on the tiny sliver of moonlight struggling through the cracks in the curtains.

“S- So,” he says, “We went against all my better fucking judgement, and we moved in together, and we did all the domestic shit. Like- making breakfast and commuting to work and shit, and then one day…” There is a peculiar twist to his voice, and Roy knows him well enough to know he’s smiling bitterly. “One day there was a bomb- a _bomb,_ of all the fucking things-on the fucking train and I guess, well, shit, I guess I almost died.”

He’s rushing now, tripping over his words as if they’re hurting him, and at each hard pellet-sting of the words Roy _remembers_.

 _A bomb on the train.  
 _ Nine a.m. and Roy had been leaning sleepily on the counter pouring his coffee, wondering whether Ed was at work already or if the delays had been bad again. And the phone had rung, jolting him out of the familiar routine, and he’d _known_ \- don’t ask him _how_ he’d known, but he had. Something was wrong. The news on the other end of the line was as bad as it was ever going to get, and in the moments in which he’d reached for the receiver he’d run through every possibility in his mind: _Ed delayed from work, needs me to pick him up; Elysia’s had an accident at school and Maes and Gracia are at work, they need me to pick her up; Ed’s been in a fight; Ed’s been in a crash; someone’s hurt; someone’s dying…_

“The hospital,” he says, and Ed blinks shiny-eyed at him through the dark. “I remember- you were in the hospital, and they called me because Al was on an exchange trip and he couldn’t get back in time, and I scared the living daylights out of a taxi driver to get to you. And when I got there they almost didn’t let me in because I wasn’t family, but I could hear you shouting at the nurses from two floors away, and I told them I could get you to shut up-,”

“So they let you in,” Ed finishes. “Fucking typical. I was all fucked up, I guess, fucking delirious and then you came in and sat next to me and you looked me straight in the eyes and told me you loved me. And that shut me up pretty fucking quickly.”

Roy almost- _almost-_ laughs. “It did, yes.”

Ed huffs out a breath that could be, conceivably, humorous. Roy can’t bear not touching him any longer; he reaches over and takes his hand. Ed squeezes his fingers. Hard.

“I knew that was the beginning of it all,” he says, quietly. “The bomb, I mean. I knew it would only get worse from there, ‘cause that’s what always happens, but I was too fucking in love with you to _leave._ ”

“It wasn’t your fault,” says Roy, desperate for this, at least, to get through to him; he laces his fingers tighter in Ed’s as if the contact will solidify the sentiment, “Ed, of _course_ it wasn’t your fault.”

“Shut up,” Ed orders, and the strange twist is back in his voice again, turning his words sour. “Everything is my fault, Mustang. You should fuckin’ _know_ that by now.”

He phrases it like it’s a joke, but the way he clings to Roy’s hand like he’s drowning says different. Ed sits up in bed, hair pouring down his back like silk.

“You aren’t the sole perpetrator of every single bad thing that goes on in the world,” Roy tells him, _beseeches_ him, pushing himself up beside him. “I refuse to believe it.”

“Refuse all you fuckin’ want, it doesn’t _change_ anything-,”

“I actually happen to think it does, Edward.”

“I actually happen to think you should shut the fuck up.”

Silhouetted in the fragmented moonlight, Ed looks at him and his eyes say _please just let it go._

“You’ve made that abundantly clear, don’t worry,” says Roy, determined not to let Ed change the subject, “But unfortunately for you, I’m not currently paying any attention to what you ‘happen to think’, since you’re so incredibly and ridiculously obsessed with the idea that your _enormous_ guilt complex is in _any_ way reasonable, your opinions clearly can’t be trusted.”

Ed is silent for a long time. Then, “that was a long sentence.”

“I think I almost ran out of air halfway through,” Roy admits, “but I was so determined to get my point across that I pushed forth regardless.”

Ed laughs, the merest breath of air rushing out of him before he can stop himself, and then he tips his head back and laughs some more. And Roy can’t help but join him, the two of them sitting there in this shitty motel, laughing and laughing at how _stupid_ their situation is. And if there are tears, too, mixed in with the desperation to find some modicum of humour in it all, then they don’t say anything about it.

***

So they’re miles away from anything and everything.

 Barren sand and grit and dust stretch out before and beyond them, an endless rust-coloured sea. The sun, cradle by the ashy mountain range scrawled in the distance, winks at them as it dips, just barely, below the horizon. Ed leans back against the windscreen of the truck, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head as he squints thoughtfully into the sunset.  
 Carefully, ever so carefully, Roy mirrors his position on the hood of the truck, pulling himself up so his back is against the windscreen- please don’t break, he prays fervently, please don’t break- and his feet are resting on the warm metal.

“Me ‘n Al used to do shit like this,” Ed says quietly, and the sun’s dying rays are reflected in his eyes.

“Sit on the hood of a four-by-four in the middle of nowhere while on the run from government forces hell-bent on capturing and most likely experimenting on you?” Roy asks.

Ed gives him a dirt look. “Shut the fuck up. Not the government thing- well. Sometimes the government thing. Not a lot, though,” he says hastily, when Roy turns sharply to look at him; “it only happened a couple times! Mostly we just- drove out into the desert, you know? Watched the stars. One lifetime, we met this guy, Alfons. He was amazing. He knew all the constellations by heart. _All_ of them. And all the myths and shit that went with them, and all the mathematical data- he was a great guy.”

“What happened to him?” Roy asks, because Ed’s voice has turned soft and sad and wistful. Ed shrugs.

“He died,” he says, eyes darkening briefly with pain. “Lung cancer. He was going to be a rocket scientist, but I guess the universe didn’t think it could handle someone as fucking brilliant as he was.”

 _I could say the same about you_ , Roy doesn’t say, because he knows that Ed’s thinking the same thing and there’s no point voicing your fears if it’s only going to make them bigger.

Ed does this, sometimes; his hints about his various other lifetimes are few and far between but sometimes he’ll suddenly tell Roy something, out of the blue and offhandedly, as if he’s testing the waters. Testing Roy’s reactions, wondering how far he can trust him.  
Roy hopes that this is a test he passes. Roy hopes that someday, Ed will let him in completely; but until that day, he takes what he can get, and tries his damndest not to break into tears every time Ed’s stories, as they invariably do, end in tragedy.

It’s not Ed, although Roy knows Ed thinks it is; it’s the _higher power_ , or maybe just the callous cruelty of nature, that takes away every good thing Ed finds and knocks him into the dust over and over again. The injustice of it, the sheer grievance of it all, physically _hurts_ Roy. Ed deserves _so much_ better than this: loss, and loss, and loss.  
It’s no wonder Ed can’t bring himself to let Roy in, when every other time he trusted the universe not to fuck things up, the universe flipped him the grand cosmic equivalent of the bird and took away whatever it was that Ed was trying so desperately to protect.  
  
It’s not fair.

“It’s not fair,” says Ed, tight fists and fraying edges, now. “It’s not fucking _fair_ that I get so many damn second chances, and he got _none_. Why not him? He deserves this shit- the chance to be brilliant again and again, to invent and innovate and just- _live_. Me? I don’t deserve a fucking thing.”

His voice climbs, higher and louder; his muscles taut, his jaw clenched, and Roy’s heart is trapped in a vice like grip. _No,_ he thinks, _no, no._

“Ed, that’s _not true_ ,” he says fiercely and Ed _flinches_.

“Shut up,” he says, “it is. You know it is. I fucked up last time and you- you died.” The last word is a curse, red-hot. Used too many times and wearing down. “ _You_.  I fucked up again and again and every time, _someone else_ paid for it. It’s not fair that I keep coming back, getting more people hurt. Maybe I’m the universe’s final ‘fuck you’ to humanity.” He laughs, dryly. Above them, the evening star glimmers faintly in the dusk.

“You’re not,” says Roy, and Ed looks determinately away from him even as Roy turns in toward him; he _has_ to understand this, at least: “Ed. You’re not. I don’t care how many times we come back to this; I don’t care how many times I have to say this to you before you accept it. _This isn’t your fault_.”

“Fuck off,” says Ed. “Just- shut up, okay? Shut up.”

“When have I ever listened to you when you’ve told me to shut up?” Roy asks him. “ _You_ shut up. I’m serious. I’m always serious. You’ve told me, before, about the gate. About the voice you hear there. Whoever that voice belongs to- whatever higher power, whatever force of nature; hell, Ed, maybe it’s _God_ \- whoever it is, _they’re_ to blame. Not you. _Never_ you.”

Ed scoffs at him, wins churning his bangs as he turns to face Roy, the desert silent but for their voices. “Then why the _fuck_ does God get his kicks from punching me-metaphorically _and_ literally- in the face every fucking lifetime? I must’ve done _something_ to deserve this.”

“Maybe you did,” says Roy, “ _maybe you did_. But it doesn’t _matter_.”

“Yeah? What if I was a mass-murderer in a past life and I just forgot about it?”

“Don’t start philosophising about this to me, Ed, you know you weren’t-,”

“This entire _conversation_ has been you getting philosophical on _me_ and now I’m not even allowed to put forwards a simple fucking hypothesis?”

“No one deserves this,” Roy says, firmly, “believe me. _Believe me_. It’s not your fault, and even if you _did_ do something that somehow managed to piss off God, then judging from the empirical data I’ve collected it’s more likely that you- saved billions of lives, or thwarted an evil deity’s plan to take over the world, or solved world hunger, or _something_.“

Ed’s eyes are wild as he shakes his head, and his voice is saturated in enough sarcasm to decimate a country. “Oh, right, so now God’s _evil_ , and I’m the hero that stopped their scheme for fucking galactic domination or whatever-,”

“Ed,” says Roy, and catches his face with the palm of his hand.

Ed blinks at him, startled and all at once quiet, and Roy swallows.

 “That’s me,” says Ed.

Roy -laughs. _That’s me_.  
 “Just- I know you don’t want to believe it. I _know_. But please just know that when I say it’s not your fault, I _mean_ it. And when I say that you’re the single most incredible person in any universe and I love you, I mean that, too.”

Ed’s breath leaves him slowly.

They’ve done this before; Roy knows that, can _taste_ it, the anticipation, the _familiarity_ of it- but not like this. Not in this lifetime.

“You love me,” says Ed, slowly. Roy nods.  
  
There is a mere centimetre between their lips. When Ed breathes in, his nose brushes against Roy’s, startling both of them.  

“May I kiss you?” Roy asks, and Ed reaches up, uncharacteristically gentle, to tug at a handful of Roy’s hair.

“Fuck yeah,” he says, and they move at once, pressing their mouths together and breathing in as their lips slot into perfect place.

Sitting there on the hood of a car they got from a shady black market dealership, in the middle of the goddamn desert, the roar of the road miles behind them and the horizon their only goal; they kiss, and the world stills for them.

Maybe God is evil, or maybe God is benevolent, or maybe God doesn’t exist at all. Maybe they’re both victims of a matrix effect and this is all a fucked-up dream or hallucination; maybe none of this ever happened and Roy will wake up gasping, drowning in sheets and the knowledge of another day of mundanity-

Maybe. But neither of them care, at this point, for maybes and what-ifs. This, here, now: the only thing that matters.

Ed makes a half-muted sound that vibrates at Roy’s throat, and knots his fingers tighter in his hair. Roy closes his eyes, and moves closer. The air has turned colder, but he doesn’t feel it. Ed shifts to kneel over Roy’s lap, knees either side of his thighs, one hand braced behind Roy on the windscreen, the other tilting Roy head back by his hair.

They are, all at once, needy; hungry; consumed. _God, I missed this. God, I love you._ Roy breaks back to gasp for breath and Ed’s eyes burn him alive.

“Fuck,” says Ed, breathing hard.

Roy doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches up and kisses Ed again, again, again.

***

“I’m scared, too,” says Roy into the dark, and in the backseat Ed pauses in beating the shit out of the coat he’s using as a pillow.  
Roy stares out of the window, head resting on the glass. Stars twinkle knowingly at him from the unfathomable depths of the sky.  
“I’m scared of what will happen, and I’m scared of running out of gas at an unfortunate time and _them_ catching up to us. And I’m scared that history will repeat itself. And I’m scared of losing you.”

Ed swallows audibly behind him, but Roy doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t particularly want Ed to see the tears.

“Didn’t think you did ‘scared’,” Ed says quietly, and there’s a small _thunk_ as he slumps his head into the window. “Me, too.”

They are quiet, and Roy can see in the reflection in the window that Ed, too, is gazing up at the stars, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Twenty miles until the next big city,” says Roy, repositioning the folded blanket cushioning his skull, “Should be fun. We can sightsee.”

“Let’s buy disguises,” says Ed, “those shitty glasses with the moustaches attached.”

Roy cracks a grin. “Okay.”

“ _Sweet_.” says Ed, and shuffles back down to stretch out precariously over the seats. He hesitates. “G’night, Roy.”

“Sleep tight,” Roy returns, and there’s a muffled _fuck you_ from behind him, and silence falls. He knows he should sleep, should rest; after all, he’ll be driving all day tomorrow- but his eyelids refuse to fall. So he leans against the window, and stares out into the night, and waits for the dawn.

 

***

 

“You know how to use this, right?” Winry asked, gesturing to the gun nestled in the glove compartment, and Roy swallowed hard. Lifetimes flickered behind his eyes and he thought _yes_.

“Pretty much,” he said, and Winry raised an eyebrow.

“You sure you don’t want a demonstration? I’ve got a pretty sweet shooting range set up with, like, tin cans and stuff back there-,”

“No,” said Roy, fighting a wave of nausea that rose, unbidden, in response to the ticker-tape flashes of memory. “No, thank you. I know how.”

 

***

 

With dawn comes helicopters, propellers beating the air with a battering _thudthudthudthud_ and Roy jolts upright, eyes wild- he’d fallen asleep. He hadn’t meant to, but his eyes must’ve drifted closed involuntarily and now the morning light has broken crisp over the mountains and Ed is leaning over the seat yelling something loud and wire-sharp with panic, digging through the glovebox.

He pulls the gun, weighted strangely in his hands, and Roy stares at him; their eyes meet across the gap between seats.

_Step out of the vehicle._

This- isn’t happening.

_You are under arrest._

It can’t be.

Roy wants to laugh with the simplicity of it all: the gold of ed’s eyes on his, the dull metal shine of the gun steady in his grip, the calmness of the daytime, clouds all fluffy white and tranquil.

 _I’m sorry_ , says Ed.

 _I love you_ , says Roy.

 

Outside- they don’t stand a chance inside the car; the gun is cool pressed against Ed’s hard-muscled stomach tucked into his waistband, Roy knows this, Roy held it there and said _don’t do anything stupid_ before he kissed him; he wonders if that’s the last kiss they’ll ever share?- and he’s prepared to stand and fight, god damn it; it strikes him as surprising that it’s still only half-daytime; dawn is slowly rising and there are shadows enough still. Ed’s face is caught, half-turned back towards Roy, open and tragic, in the glare of a blinding searchlight beam.

The chopper churns the wind into fragments. Roy remembers.

It’s a gamble, a _fucking_ gamble, but Ed said they wanted them alive, and as long as they’re alive they can still escape, somehow; Roy’s seen spy movies; Roy’s lived past lives as a soldier, as a tactician- they’ll find a way out of this, _surely_ -

Ed, turning towards him, silhouetted against that bright white beam: _Roy_ \- _I-_

 _I know,_ Roy shouts over the roar of the chopper, _Ed- this isn’t your fault. Wait for me._

 _Wait for me_.

Megaphones and flashing, flashing; a kaleidoscope of lights as the squad cars corner them, blockading them in like thirty-foot walls instead of vehicles half Roy’s height. Red, blue, white; rinse and repeat. The colours spin and dance over Ed’s cheekbones; Ed’s eyes catch every fractured shade and throw it back, gold-tinted, precious metal.

Roy reaches across the divide and takes Ed’s hand, grips tightly. Half in memory and half out of it; there are two Roys and two Eds and all of them are crying silently.

Dust swirls around them, tossed up by the roiling waves of air and standing here is like standing in their very own storm. Roy kind of wishes he’d stuck his head out into the rain after all. Roy kind of wishes he’d kissed Ed more when he had the chance.

He had the chance now.

An official looking uniformed member of the team of megaphone-wielders orders them to put their hands in the air, but Roy barely hears him. Ed is looking at him with agony painted over every inch of his lovely face and Roy kisses him hard, kisses away the lines and the guilt.

 _Listen to me_ , he says, _this is not your fault._

Wait for me.

Ed fists his hands in Roy’s shirt. “I only just fucking got you back,” he chokes, and Roy’s cheeks are wet; tears glimmering like diamonds in the moonlike torch beam.

“I know,” he says, “I _know_ , god, I know, I love you. I love you.”

“I love you,” Ed says to him, fierce, and kisses him again, lips sliding against lips harsh and wet and raw and truthful. “Always fucking will, you bastard. I’ll wait for you. You better fucking find me.”

_Put your hands in the air and get on the ground._

Ed looks at Roy.

The circling lights and the white noise from the radio transmitters don’t mean anything to him. They’re loud, but he doesn’t hear them; doesn’t care enough to be scared by them.

 _It was worth it,_ he tells him, _every fucking second of it, to spend that time with you. Asshole._

Roy looks at Ed.

 _That’s my line,_ he says.

Who needs to be scared when you have infinite chances to redo your life? Who needs anything except this, here, now; this boy, this and any other lifetime?

He nods.

And Ed reaches under his shirt to thrust the gun into the air and squeeze off three shots in quick succession.

 

***

 

Death feels like a swimming pool full of warm water.

“Humans never fail to make me laugh,” says the voice, amused, and Roy spins in a lazy circle to face…nothing. Of course. “A warm swimming pool. How insightful.”

Roy sighs. It seems to go on forever, reverberating around and around and around the empty space until eventually it dissipates into nothingness.

He remembers everything, here. Or maybe he remembered it all already, and it wasn’t until the very end that he started to acknowledge it.

Ed. Oh, God, _Ed_.

“Are you going to tell me what the point of it all is?” he asks, and even though he can’t see the disembodied figure, he _feels_ the shrug rippling through the particles around him.

Not that there are particles in a void.

Not that there’s much of anything in a void.

“What would be the fun in that?” asks the voice, and Roy…still isn’t aware enough to be truly angry about that. Oh, well. He’s sure he’ll have plenty of time to be incensed with boiling rage when he’s back in the world of the living again. He thinks about that, and he thinks about Ed- beautiful, baffling, brilliant Edward Elric- and he thinks about how he’s going to make it work, this time.  
_They’re_ going to make it work.  
They’re going to be _happy_ , God damn it, or _so help him_ -

Ah. It appears Roy does have it in him to be incensed with boiling rage in the void.

“Take me to him,” he says, and the owner of the voice smirks- figuratively, anyway- and inclines its head.

“Your wish,” it says with a flourish, “My command. Enjoy yourself.”

 

***

Maes sets the new saucer of coffee down in front of him and collapses into the chair opposite. “Honestly, Roy,” he says, “I don’t understand why you’re so _attached_ to this place. It’s not even the best café in town- Gracia showed me this _adorable_ place the other day, and-,”

“Maes, your opinion doesn’t count for _anything_ when it comes to café talk,” says Roy, leaning back against the seat- they’ve had an upgrade since the last time he came here; the maroon leather is a much nicer look, and more comfortable, too- “You don’t even _like_ coffee.”

“Alas,” says Maes, tipping his head back to swoon dramatically at the ceiling, “’Tis true. Fair Lady Grey owns my heart. As I’ve always said, and as Elysia has taken to saying these past few weeks, “can’t go wrong with a nice cuppa.””

He opens his eyes a sliver of a fraction after a long minute of silence, because it’s not like Roy to wait so long before delivering a snappy comeback- and finds the man in question staring straight past him with an expression so complicated it hurts Maes’ eyes to look at it.

“Roy?” he asks tentatively, and Roy doesn’t answer, just starts to grin, very, very slowly.

Maes looks over his shoulder.

_Oh._

His eyes fall immediately on the object of Roy’s enrapturement: there’s an astoundingly stunning blond boy standing stock still in the doorway, _staring_ at Roy with the _exact_ same expression mirrored on his face, and next to him is an almost-identical looking boy- a few inches taller, with shorter hair and a concerned look on his face as he nudges the other one’s shoulder.

“Brother? You can stop staring now, Brother. Ed. This is getting sort of weird, even for y-,”

“You _fucking asshole_ ,” says the blond boy, very loudly.

Everything goes quiet. The cashier drops the coin they’re holding, and it makes the loudest sound in the universe as it plinks off the side of the till, bounces several times, rolls along the counter, spins wildly for a few moments at the _very_ edge, and finally tumbles to a halt, gleaming prettily in the light from the bulb fixture hanging directly above it.

Roy’s grin stops being a slow unfurling thing and breaks into the biggest, cheesiest son of a bitch Maes has ever seen grace his best friend’s face.

 “I missed you too, Ed,” he says, and stands up.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its me [tumblr](http://kattobinguwu.tumblr.com) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


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